April 14, 2014

Red Sox Manager Rips Replay After Ejection: Boston Red Sox skipper John Farrell has become the first to be ejected for arguing a replay decision. A day after Major League Baseball announced that a replay call against the Red Sox was decided incorrectly, Farrell watched an inning-ending double play be reversed, putting a Yankees run on the board. He thought the replay of a close play at first against Yankees runner Francisco Cervelli was inconclusive. "It's hard to have any faith in the system," Farrell said.

I don't think this happens if the call is made correctly in the previous game.

Agreed. I know the conventional wisdom is that borderline calls will even out over the course of a season, but using replay should eliminate the vast majority of borderline calls. After enduring 2 in a row in consecutive games, I think Farrell has good cause to be dubious.

The question I have is "who provides the replays to those who interpret them?". If it is anyone connected with the home team, it would be very easy to make sure that a replay showing an adverse result to the home team would never reach the eyes of the judges, while making sure those that show the favorable result are featured. In other words, MLB has to take control of all the video feeds that are in use, look at all of the feeds, and only then make a ruling. This now becomes the time consuming nightmare that all have feared. The alternative is to have only one "official" source of video, and this must have an MLB representative supervising not only the actual video feed but also the camera locations, selection of operators, and all other aspects of the system. I'm not holding my breath until that happens.

To me the best solution is to go back to the good, old human eyeball. Yes, umpires will miss calls, but these will tend to even themselves out over time. The 2 disputed calls in NY are a good example. The things that are really necessary for keeping the human-only system are to have better umpire training, a system of discipline for umpires who miss calls due to poor positioning or lack of hustle, and more accountability to the fans concerning poor performing umpires. Sadly, the union will not let this happen easily, so for now we are stuck with a system that is still flawed and might be worse than what we had previously.